March 6-10, 2019, PIER 90, 12th Avenue (West 50th Street), NY 10019, New York, booth A20

Voloshyn Gallery is proud to announce its participation in VOLTA New York, for the second year in a row. It will showcase a solo presentation of the latest works of Oleksiy Sai’s praxis project Excel-Art in VOLTA’s main program, and a new version of the site-specific installation The Market by Zhanna Kadyrova at the Special Projects section.

The VOLTA fair was founded in Basel (Switzerland) in 2005, debuting in New York as VOLTA NY in 2008 as a satellite to The Armory Show (celebrating its 25th anniversary this year). The art show specializes in solo projects, as reflected in its mandate of “global vision – solo focus.” In 2019, the organizers of VOLTA NY selected 70 galleries from 37 countries representing Europe, Asia, North America and Africa.

In the new works presented at Voloshyn Gallery’s booth, Oleksiy Sai further develops the ideas of his large-scale praxis project Excel-Art. Sai has been working with Excel software as a visual language resource since 2004. The artist sees the abstract language of numbers, graphs and diagrams as the only possible mode of addressing the monotonous life of office workers. It should be noted that Sai offers a markedly neutral and objective representation of the life of white-collar workers in all its facets: the artist doesn’t seek to criticize or satirize the office “lifestyle.”

Sai prints these Excel images on aluminum sheets and signs each work. Despite the fact that the originals of these images are digital, and hence easily reproducible, they programmatically exist in one copy only.

The booth will also feature 20 miniature statues from Sai’s Mould project (2009-2014). Almost identical tin soldiers dressed as office workers with grotesquely wide smiles are so small that they create an illusion of bird’s-eye view. It marks the artist’s new attempt to explore the reality of the “managerial class.”

Oleksiy Sai was born in 1975 in Kyiv, where he lives and works to this day. He graduated from the Kyiv College of Arts and Industries with a degree in graphic design in 1993, and from the Department of Easel Graphic Art at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in 2001. PinchukArtCentre Prize nominee ’09, he is widely exhibited. Oleksiy Sai took part in many group and solo exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad. His works were exhibited at Black Square Gallery (Miami, the USA), Saatchi Gallery (London, the UK), Bunsen Goertz Gallery (Nurembreg, Germany), PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art (Perm, Russia), etc.

Additionally, Voloshyn Gallery will also present an updated, 4th version of The Market by Zhanna Kadyrova at VOLTA Special Projects. The first iteration of The Market was realized as an intervention into the sterile atmosphere of ART Monte Carlo fair (Monaco, April 2017). It was also exhibited at the Kyiv Art Week (May 2018) and at PULSE Art Fair (Miami, December 2018), where it was awarded the PULSE Prize as the best solo project of PULSE 2018.

The Market is a travelling site-specific installation, traditionally taking the form of a performance. In this work, Zhanna Kadyrova recreates a recognizable market stall selling food products, with all its necessary accouterments, including mechanical scales, a plastic chair, carts of vegetables and fruit, etc. The artist manufactured “the foodstuffs” of heavyweight construction materials: ceramic tiles, cement, concrete and natural stone. Dressed as a salesperson, Kadyrova invites the booth’s visitors to buy artworks by weight, and to haggle as one would at a real market. Therefore, the artist undermines the rules of price formation for art objects current on the art market, and raises the issue of how our understanding of material or spiritual values is formed.

Each performance is unique: The Market’s selection of goods is updated every time to make it more site-specific and fit the trends of the local market. Therefore, Kadyrova is creating a new series of original artworks for the New York performance, designed to represent the city’s trademark “products.” The site-specific format also informs price formation: according to the artist’s logic, the price of 1 gram has to equal 1 local unit of currency of the country hosting the presentation.

Zhanna Kadyrova was born in 1981 in the town of Brovary, just outside Kyiv, Ukraine. She graduated from the Department of Sculpture of the T.H. Shevchenko State Comprehensive Art School (Kyiv) in 1999. She juggernauted multiple art groups, exhibitions and performances, including participating in and co-founding the R.E.P. group (Ukrainian abbreviation for Revolutionary Experimental Space). She curates exhibitions at LabGarage (Kyiv). In 2009, she created The Monument to a New Monument in the town of Sharhorod, Ukraine. She was awarded the special PinchukArtCentre prize in 2011, the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize for her Shape of Light (in Public Art category) in April 2012, the Kazimir Malevich Prize in December 2012, and the PinchukArtCentre Main Prize in 2013. She participated in many international exhibitions, including the Ukrainian pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Nouvelles Vagues, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2013). In 2014, she joined the art residence of the Baró Galeria (São Paulo, Brazil). In 2016, she took part in an exhibition at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). In 2018, she was awarded PULSE Prize for the best solo project of PULSE art fair ‘18. The artist lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Founded in October 2016 by Max and Julia Voloshyn, Voloshyn Gallery specializes in contemporary art. It showcases a broad range of media in contemporary art, hosting solo and group exhibitions.

Voloshyn Gallery fosters the integration of Ukrainian art into global cultural processes, representing its artists at international art fairs and shows in Europe and the US. Voloshyn Gallery aims to discover exceptional talent, with particular focus on emerging and mid-career artists.

Its cutting-edge exhibition space is located in Kyiv’s cultural and historical center, on Tereshchenkivska Street, in a historic 1913 building formerly owned by a renowned entrepreneur and philanthropist N.A. Tereshchenko. The collector and philanthropist Bohdan Khanenko bought the building for his wife Varvara, renovating it as a revenue house. Its second floor was envisioned as an exhibition and storage space for Khanenko’s expanding museum of fine arts.

Maksym and Julia Voloshyn have been active in the art business since 2006. Their first gallery, Mystetska Zbirka Art Gallery, specialized in classical and post-war 20th century Ukrainian art. In 2015, the Voloshyns made it to the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.

PIER 90

12th Avenue (West 50th Street)

NY 10019, New York, USA

Voloshyn Gallery

Kyiv, 13 Tereshchenkivska Str., enter the 2nd courtyard through the archway

+38 067 467 00 07, +38 044 234 14 27, www.voloshyngallery.art, info@voloshyngallery.art

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